Brush Local News

Reports of abduction attempts rise after Jessica Ridgeway case

By Sadie Gurman The Denver Post

Posted:
11/06/2012 12:01:00 AM MST

Updated:
11/06/2012 09:12:17 AM MST

Holly Pierce was horrified one October afternoon when her 8-year-old son rushed home and told her, through tears, that a man had tried to lure him into his car as he rode his bike in their Parker neighborhood.

"He came in screaming and crying. He was inconsolable, and he was frantic," Pierce said. "All he saw was someone waving, and he thought, 'What else could that mean but "get in the car"?' ... We kept saying, 'Are you sure? Are you sure? Tell us again.' But we wanted to let him know we believed him, too."

She called the police.

The case was among scores of reports of abduction attempts that have landed on detectives' desks throughout the metro area in the weeks since 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway was kidnapped and killed while leaving her Westminster home for school. And like many of them, Pierce's incident turned out to be a misunderstanding.

The man Pierce's son believed was trying to draw him into his sedan had pulled to the side of the road to look up an address on his phone, Parker police said. He had stopped to let the boy cross, motioning with his hand for him to go ahead. Startled to see a picture of his car on the news, the man came forward to say he was not a predator but was just lost.

Police encourage children and parents' vigilance, especially in light of Jessica's slaying. The suspect charged in her death, 17-year-old Austin Sigg, is also accused of trying to kidnap a woman in May. But police also note that the firestorm that followed has detectives spending countless hours investigating a crime that is rare.

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There are about 115 stranger abductions of children in the U.S. each year, a number that is not rising despite the rush of public attention given to it after it happens — or almost happens, or seems to have happened. Abduction attempts, or child enticements, as many police agencies classify them, also are rare but are harder for law enforcement to quantify, as what can appear to a young child as a crime might not always be considered one. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation says it doesn't keep track of such abduction tries throughout the state. And while local agencies monitor the reports, they don't always keep a running count.

Colorado defines a true child enticement as a situation in which a person tries to lure someone younger than age 15 to a secluded place specifically to commit sexual assault or contact.

"You have to prove intent," said Denver police Sgt. Julie Wheaton, who oversees the city's sex-assault squad. "And that part is particularly difficult."

Denver classified 22 incidents as "child enticements" in 2010 and 30 last year, though police estimate just one or two of those fit the definition under the law. Others might be just as troubling but a challenge to solve. A child's memory could be foggy. Evidence may be scarce. A witness sees something that isn't so. Or maybe there is no witness.

"Sometimes, we get a call for a guy looking at kids. Officers come across him; he doesn't have a great story of why he's sitting there. Say he's even a sex offender," Wheaton said. "What can we do with that? What if the caller says he was talking to a kid, but the kid is gone? We're still going to talk to him, but what can we do beyond that? Almost nothing."

Even so, the Ridgeway case has police urging communities to remain vigilant and report all strange behavior. And as a result, such reports are on the rise.

Denver has already clocked 30 child enticements this year — the same amount as in all of 2011 — and other agencies have also seen a recent increase.

"Lately, we're getting them every two or three days," said Mark Techmeyer, a spokesman for the Jefferson County sheriff's department who has also investigated such cases.

Before the Ridgeway case captured the public's attention, the department would go weeks without such a report. Police are glad parents and kids are becoming more aware, Techmeyer said, even if it means more legwork for investigators.

On an October afternoon, for example, a group of six 10- and 11-year-old girls told sheriff's deputies that a man in a black Lexus stared at them while they were playing in the street. Deputies tried to discern what about that made the girls uneasy, knowing the subtleties of a child's memory could mean the difference between a crime and a false alarm.

"Was he sitting there eating a sandwich, was he on a Bluetooth phone, was he staring at the kids because he wanted to make sure he didn't hit them, or was he staring at the kids because he misses his granddaughter?" Techmeyer said.

Investigators determined the incident did not warrant a public announcement because they lacked key details, but "that's still the kind of thing we like to hear because if we have another incident in that area," detectives can see if there is a pattern, Techmeyer said.

That was the case Oct. 13, when a 13-year-old boy told sheriff's deputies that a man in a blue sedan tried to kidnap him as he walked near his house in Golden. The man called out to the boy to come closer, then got out of the car and approached him when he started to back away, Techmeyer said. His mother rushed out and snapped a photo of the car, which bore similarities to one involved in a pair of attempted abductions in Arvada in September.

Authorities wasted no time airing the photo on Twitter and in the news, and the unidentified 18-year-old at the wheel was just as quick to come forward to clear his name. He told deputies he was searching for a former girlfriend who lived near the boy and was trying to get him to tell her to come outside. He was not charged.

Arvada detectives also eliminated him as a suspect in the pair of September abduction tries, which remain under investigation and have generated hundreds of tips.

To jog a child's memory and make sure he isn't confused or lying to get out of trouble, Arvada Detective Michael Roemer sends children to forensic interviews for an unbiased outcome.

"We're dealing with such a safety issue that you can't just immediately jump to, 'they're not credible,' " he said. "If they have good memory recall, then it's at least worth putting a sketch artist in front of them and seeing how it goes."

If a child can generate a sketch, the detective said, he usually releases it to the public. He searches for witnesses, pores over the sex-offender registry and asks probation and parole officers if the description matches any of their cases.

"Sometimes you can quickly rule out just based on follow-up interviews," Roemer said. "It was a legitimate call, a legitimate concern, but it wasn't any criminal activity."

The string of suspicious reports, he added, is a reminder that parents should teach their kids what to do if they spot something that makes them uncomfortable.

"I'd rather have an overreactive public than an underreactive one," the detective said.

If anything, Holly Pierce has learned that she taught her young son well.